How to Cratedig in the 21st Century

Even though the vinyl medium has seen a resurgence, the era of digging through crates to find new songs is largely over for most DJs. While some may miss the nostalgic physical experience, it’s been replaced by a powerful digital landscape where no one is limited by their geography or the quality of local store clerks. Now we can follow and pick through the collections of the very best tastemakers from around the globe, digging up a treasure trove of new musical gems every day.

THE AGE OF COLLECTIVES

Dirtybird’s Birdhouse on Drip.FM

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, you probably know that labels are in a tough place: nobody’s making any money any more, and artists are using things like Bandcamp and Tunecore to get their music out there, if they’re even selling it at all. But here’s a secret: a lot of music labels are doing just fine.

With easy online distribution, tons of new labels have sprouted up who exist less as music sales machines and more as tastemakers. Collectives like Friends of Friends, LuckyMe, Dirtybird’s Bird House, Mad Decent Premium, and OWSLA’s Nest are all examples of collectives that deal largely in forward thinking music with a certain “sound.” With the latter three, they’re actually microsites run by the labels on Drip.FM – each of which carries a monthly fee to get exclusive prereleases, unreleased tracks, and more.

While these small batch labels aren’t new in dance music, they’re more specific and plentiful then ever. To find the one that appeals to you, try these:

Check up on a track you like: who posted it originally? Is it backed by a collective or label?

Go to events in your town; see if the DJ’s are all affiliated: a new trend is club nights that feature a lineup of a few artists in the same collective.

Check groups on Soundcloud; they frequently feature a narrow range of artists in the same sphere. Using genre tags, you can quickly find a collective that might be putting music out you like.

ENGAGE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

You may bristle at this, but if you’re not on Twitter, you’re missing out. Sure, it’s a forum for a bunch of lonely people taking photos of their food, but it’s also a place where artists engage with other musicians about content they love. A quick browse across someone like Astronomar, a DJ from Los Angeles, reveals a huge treasure trove of new artists:

Equally, Skrillex – love him or hate him – posts a huge amount of music from around the web on his Facebook page, both from his record label and from people he’s feeling at the moment. Go through the pages of artists you like and look for social media pages that feature a lot of interesting content.

Specific artists to look for are older DJs and musicians in the scene, especially ones who run their own boutique labels: they’re often the ones who are most passionate about new music.

YouTube channels are huge tastemakers these days, with full marketing teams and A&R departments. Look at who’s posting some tracks you’ve been enjoying recently: who uploaded them? Is there a single channel with a branded image (think MajesticCasual or TrapCity) or a conglomerate (EDMSpotlight and the .NET groups) that’s uploading stuff you love? Check recommended material; the algorithms have become incredibly sophisticated, and more often than not, you’ll be satisfied with the suggested material.

There are even subreddits dedicated to a lot of these channels: chances are, if you like a genre, there’s a dedicated forum on Reddit for it, with a group of users who will stumble across and post new material fairly consistently – check out this full list of music-related subreddits to get started.

VINYL SAMPLE BLOGS

You already know about music blogs – they’re the lifeblood of the HypeMachine and, in general, an overwhelming world of content varying in consistency, taste, and quality. But for the DJ who genuinely loves crate digging for the eclectic surpises and sample-friendly hooks, there’s a whole community of blogs that provide. Often these sample blogs post high-quality vinyl rips of records that haven’t ever been widely digitized – meaning you’re getting a relatively rare release (albeit of questionably legality).

Here’s a couple that we can recommend – but there’s always more to find:

FIND THE NEW RETAILERS

Record stores might be closing, but new online music retailers are popping up every day, and each one varies in methodology and delivery. Naturally, there are standard delivery websites like bandcamp and purevolume, allowing artists to rapidly release and distribute their own content.

On the flipside are new and exciting start-ups like Songza, a music suggestion engine that not only caters to moods and activities, but has a “Record Store Clerk” function which highlights certain musical trends, like “Dance Music That’s Not Assaultive” and even “This Will Piss Off Your Parents,” there’s a wealth of consumer-level music websites that fill the job of a record store near perfectly, albeit without that real-world feel.

Protip:Use multiple different engines in sync: try discovering new artists on a Rdio-like program and then looking through potential bandcamp releases; check for related artists, collaborators, or other credited musicians. This can open up a vast world of tracks, all from what began as a single song.

DON’T FEAR YOUR FRIENDS

Seek out musically informed friends with similar tastes

Ultimately, an algorithm can do a lot of the work for you, but we’ve all skipped a Pandora track or two, and sometimes the “related musicians” section can be difficult to fine-tune. It’s at this point that consulting other real, human beings is your best bet. There are a few ways to do it; there’s of course the most obvious, which is checking out what your friends are posting on social media, but there are also vast forums online that specialize in crate digging for all sorts of eclectic music:

the Cratedigging Co-Op, a lo-fi forum dedicated to all sorts of DJ-related track sourcing,

futureproducers, which features numerous threads relating to new and exciting music

seek out smaller G+ or Facebook groups where people share music – eg: FutureClubMusic

even our own forum features a few guests who contribute new music/mixes

It’s all a question of seeking out the niche and finding the community online for it. And if that niche doesn’t exist (for you liquid-DnB-jungle-trance-hip-hop fans out there), you can always start your own – the LaidbackLuke forum, as bloated as it now might be, is a great example of a community that grew out of a very specific interest.

So stop reading this article now and get diggin’! Know any other great online crate-digging resources? Let us know in the comments.

Digitally Imported is a great source of listening for me , lots of Genre
to find there. Keeps me informed with new music and new DJ’s. DI.FM
keeps my Friday nites Fresh and informed!

Ghost Of Len Bias

http://www.djservicepack.com/ is a great spot, especially for hip-hop DJs. It’s essentially a free record pool with old and new; clean, dirty, instrumentals, acapellas, the whole 9.

juepucta

Getting to know well curated blogs for out of print and rare stuff also helps.

Reef Ali-Vinyl Frontier

thanks for recommending Vinyl Frontier DJ Tech Tools! :D

Dual Citizen

Great post with some very helpful info. I’m fascinated with drip.fm. Thank you.

Keith

Trackhunter is by far the best tool for DJs to find new music. The whole point of the software is to let you trawl though all the new music without using the DJ charts so you develop your own style. Sean mentioned listening to every single release that comes out every week, Trackhunter allows you to do that. It covers all the major online digital music stores; Traxsource, JunoDownload, iTunes, Amazon Mp3, TrackItDown and more. Take a look at http://www.trackhunter.co.uk, it’s available for Mac and Windows right now. It actually warrants a whole article on DjTechTools in itself :)

Anonymous

Just downloaded it and letting it find tracks. Seems very promising though, only selected a few genres and it’s coming up with hundreds of results.

Thanks very much man!:D

Johnny01

where i cratedig:
1) Full sets. Listening to a set and finding tunes. Or let Shazam do the dirty work if there’s not any tracklist.
2) Discogs. Nuff said.
3) Spotify radio feature. Not so good for old tunes, but you can find many gems in there.
4) Soulseek or any other P2P program. Oh yeah, they still exist and you can find many users with whole collections of a specifc genre or label. Of course, it’s illegal to share copyrighted material through those networks.
5) I listen a lot to radio. Especially Rinse FM. I let Shazam do the dirty work again or i’m just tweeting to the Dj that’s playing to provide us the name of the tune. Works almost always.

Here in Greece there are not any record stores that are focused on electronic music, nor any nightclubs. There are only a handful of small venues here.

Jon

Discogs.com

Ryan

“The Vinyl Frontier”

That pun is glorious.

Reef Ali-Vinyl Frontier

haha glad you like the name :D

Guest

Personally, I love the hype machine (hypem.com). It tracks top blogged music and can be sorted by what’s new, what’s popular, and even by genre. They even track top tweeted tracks. I find it really helpful in discovering new music.

Sean

If you’re really serious about finding new music, you should be skipping the “Featured” release section of Beatport and going straight to the regular “Releases” section on their genre pages – listen to every single release that’s come out for the week EVERY WEEK. Great way to get familiar with new upcoming labels and artists you might like.

Michael Walsh

I’m famous! And considered a “musically informed friend.” Nice.

Pedro

The ones I use are Soundcloud, Majestic’s Channel (YouTube), Bandcamp and Shuffler.fm

Dan White

Everyone seems to love Magestic!

Swift Sloth

Etonmessy Channel on youtube is well worth a look, similar to Majestic quite often with links to free downloads of the tracks being promoted. I would also recommend joining mailing lists like Kerri Chandler’s MadTech Records

Bohdi

Try some of the “rooms” on turntable.fm; every time I go onto that site, I hear something new. I don’t always like t, but it’s worth a try.

Huntz

They stopped allowing users to upload music from their computers so turntable is essentially useless now. It’s a shame because I found ALL of my drum and bass in one of those rooms.

chris

by the way
some internet- streams delivers music nonstop. you only have to look at the trackname – for me, this is very similar to my childhood of ripping with an compact casette the hitradio

streaming monsters are actually Shoutcast.com, and iTunes-Radio
they have all genres